Panoramic MD to retire in 2020

Nickel producer Panoramic Resources has announced the forthcoming retirement of its managing director Peter Harold after more than 18 years of service.

The company has commenced a process for the appointment of a new managing director, as part of a management refresh, with Mr Harold due to retire by August 2020.

Mr Harold is a process engineer with more than 30 years of corporate experience in the minerals industry, and was a Business News 40under40 award winner in 2003.

He has made a longstanding commitment to Panoramic, having co-founded the company as Sally Malay Mining in 2001, where he took it from the initial $3 million public offering through to a significant nickel producer at the Savannah open pit (and later underground) nickel, copper and cobalt mine and processing plant in the Kimberley.

Panoramic acquired the Lanfranchi nickel mine in Kambalda in 2004 and produced more than 190,000 tonnes of nickel, 53,000t copper and 5,000t cobalt over the following 12 years.

Combined production from the two mines reached a record of 22,256t contained nickel in concentrate and ore in 2014.

During that time, the company paid out more than $114 million in fully franked dividends and also acquired the Panton project near Halls Creek, the Mt Henry gold project near Norseman, the Gidgee gold project near Sandstone (now Gum Creek) and Magma Metals.

Gum Creek was spun out into Horizon Gold in 2016, while Lanfranchi was placed on care and maintenance in 2015 and sold in 2018.

After three years, the Savannah mine was refinanced with new equity and a $40 million loan from Macquarie.

It is now operating, with production from the new Savannah north orebody scheduled to commence in December.